Press Release Women and Men in Ireland 2011

Men leave school earlier and women are more highly qualified

Women are more likely to have a third-level qualification than men. Over half of women aged between 25 and 35 have a third-level qualification compared with less than four out of ten men. Boys are more likely to leave school early, and girls do better than boys at second level. These facts are contained in the report Women and Men in Ireland 2011 published by the CSO today.

Irish women work fewer hours, earn less and are under-represented in the Oireachtais and in local and regional authorities. Men have a higher rate of employment, but also a far higher rate of unemployment. Men are more likely to be in the labour force and those looking after home/family are overwhelmingly female. Women in Ireland have a higher fertility rate than women from any other EU country. Most workers in the Health and Education sectors are women while most workers in Agriculture, Construction and Transport are men. Women are more likely to be admitted to hospital with depression and men are more likely to be admitted with schizophrenia and alcoholic disorders. Most murder victims are male and the vast majority of the prison population is male.

Education: The early school leavers rate among women aged 18-24 in 2010 was 8.4%, which was much lower than the male rate of 12.6%. In 2011 more girls obtained an A or B on the honours paper in the Leaving Certificate exams in English, Irish, French, Biology, Chemistry, Art and Music while more boys obtained an A or B on the honours paper in Maths, Physics, Construction studies and Engineering. Men accounted for nearly five-sixths of third-level graduates in Engineering, manufacturing and construction and 57% of graduates in Science, while women accounted for 82% of graduates in Health and welfare, 74% in Education and 63% in Arts and humanities. Women are more likely to have a third-level qualification, with over half (53%) of women aged 25-34 having a third-level qualification compared with nearly four out of ten men (39%) in this age group (Tables 3.8, 4.1, 4.2 and 4.4).

Employment: The employment rate for men in Ireland stood at about 75% over recent years, but in 2009 it plummeted to 67.3%, decreased sharply in 2010 to 64.5% and dropped again to 63.3% in 2011. The EU target rate for women in employment is 60% by 2010, a target that was met by Ireland in 2007 and 2008, but not in 2009, 2010 or 2011, when the rate had fallen to 56%. In 2011 46.7% of those in employment were women. Men worked an average of 39.4 hours a week in 2011 compared with 30.6 for women and married men worked longer hours than married women, with nearly half (44.5%) of married men working for 40 hours or more a week compared with only 14.7% of married women (Tables 2.1, 2.7, 2.9 and 2.10).

Unemployment: The unemployment rate for men in Ireland was about 5% in recent years but in 2009 it increased dramatically to 15.1% and has increased over the last two years to stand at 17.5% in 2011. The unemployment rate for women, which stood at about 4% over the last few years, also increased sharply in 2009 to 8.1% and has risen over the last two years to 10.4% in 2011. For the 20-24 age group, about a third of men and just over a fifth of women were unemployed in 2011 (Tables 2.13 and 2.14).

Decision-making: The report shows that women are under-represented in decision-making structures at both national and regional levels. In 2011, only 15.1% of TDs in Dáil Éireann were women, while they accounted for just over a third of members of State Boards, less than a fifth of members of local authorities and just over a third of the membership of Vocational Education Committees. The average representation in national parliaments for EU countries was nearly a quarter in 2011 (Tables 3.14 and 3.15).

Population: The highest fertility rate in the EU in 2010 was in Ireland at 2.07, well above the EU average of 1.59. The average age at which women gave birth to their first child rose from 25 years in 1980 to 29.4 years in 2010. Ireland had 98 men per 100 women in the population in 2011. This masks differences in the age groups: at younger ages, there are more boys than girls (as more boys are born than girls), there are fewer men than women in the 20-29 age group as more males than females have emigrated in recent years, and at older ages, there are more women than men (as women live longer than men). For the 85+ group, there are 47 men per 100 women in Ireland (Tables 1.1, 3.12 and 3.13).

Migration: The years of high immigration to Ireland were 2005 to 2008. In 2006, immigration peaked at 60,300 for males. A year later, it peaked at 52,100 for females. Since then, immigration has fallen very sharply to about 20,100 for males and 22,300 for females in 2011. Emigration rose steeply between 2006 and 2011 to about 38,700 males and 37,800 females, resulting in a net outflow leaving the country in 2011 of 18,600 males and 15,500 females (Tables 1.3 and 1.4).

Health: Women were more likely to be hospitalised in 2010, with 343 hospital discharges per 1,000 women compared with 305 discharges per 1,000 men. Men are more likely to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals for schizophrenia and alcoholic disorders while women are more likely to be admitted for depression (Tables 5.7 and 5.10).

Principal Economic Status: Men were more likely to be in the labour force than women in Ireland in 2011, with just under seven out of ten men aged over 15 at work or unemployed while a little over half of women were in the labour force. More than half a million women in 2011 were looking after home/family compared with only 9,600 men (Table 3.1).

Occupations: There were 851,300 women and 970,000 men employed in Ireland in 2011. Nearly a quarter of women (23.7%) in employment were in professional occupations and just over a fifth (20.9%) in administrative and secretarial occupations. Nearly a quarter of men (24.7%) in employment in 2011 were in skilled trades occupations while 15% were employed in professional occupations (Table 2.7).

Economic sectors: The Education and Health sectors employed the highest proportions of women in 2010 with women accounting for more than 4 out of 5 people at work in the Health sector and nearly three quarters of those in Education. The sectors with the highest proportions of men in 2010 were Construction, Agriculture and Transport. In primary education, 85% of teachers are women. And in second-level education, 63% of teachers are women. Despite this, women are not well represented at senior level positions: only 36% of medical and dental consultants are women, 53% of primary school managers, and 41% of second-level school managers (Tables 2.8, 4.6, 4.8 and 5.14).

Income: The report shows that women’s income in 2009 was around 73% of men’s income. After adjusting for the longer hours worked by men, women’s hourly earnings were around 94% of men’s (Table 3.3).

Poverty: The proportion of men at risk of poverty in 2010, after pensions and social transfers, was 15%, just above the rate of 14% for women. At risk of poverty rates were considerably lower for those in employment, at 10% for men and 5% for women (Table 3.6).

Crime: There were 12,487 persons committed to prison under sentence in 2010, of whom one in eight was female. 47 men and 11 women were victims of murder/manslaughter in 2010 (Tables 6.1 and 6.4).

Editor’s note

Women and Men in Ireland, 2011 is available on the CSO web site www.cso.ie